Project objectives

Project objectives

PLAT.F.O.R.M. main objective is to integrate social sustainability into infrastructure planning decision making and enhance connectivity of alpine regions. This means considering society and community basic needs, equitable accessibility, polycentric design and interpreting public participation as a responsibility and a right of individual citizens, rather than only interest groups/organisation. Weak public participation is more severe with reference to linear infrastructure where isolated cases are more frequent, risking to leave behind minorities from alpine and rural areas not represented by interest groups, usually from urban areas. This is stressed also in the TEN-T future guidelines stating that social impacts and interests of local authorities and civil society affected by infrastructural projects should be properly evaluated to avoid future conflicts.

The project aims at enlarging public participation by capitalizing Alpine Space previous projects results, providing tools to assess public participation feedbacks for at least 50 local/regional decision makers; raising awareness on the importance of public participation in at least 600 citizens and decision makers; enlarging public participation through ICT tools; defining future challenges, distributing 1 policy paper to at least 10 policy makers at national/EU level.

The project is aligned with Alpine Space Programme objectives aiming at a balanced territorial development enhancement, through a wider local community participation and, integrating social sustainability, the improvement of economic and environmental consequences management. Regarding 5th call ToRs, the project supports its approach: identify and valorise Alpine Space projects main quality achievements, disseminating activities targeting the relevant actors to impact on regional, national and EU policies. Finally, it contributes to set the scene for the 2014+ project generation with a specific action dedicated to define future challenges.

Raising awareness on the importance of public participation

Capitalizing Alpine Space project results and use them to enlarge public participation